


Guilty as Sin

by immortalitylost



Category: Twilight (Movies), Twilight Series - All Media Types, Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: 1920s, 1950's, Character Study, Edward's rebellious phase, Jasper shows up again, Multi, Starts dark, What if Jasper ran into him, When he ran off from Maria, With Alice, after Peter left, gets...less dark?, who he loved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:28:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27707656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/immortalitylost/pseuds/immortalitylost
Summary: Edward's life would be so much more tolerable if he could only sleep.He knew he didn’t deserve the relief.He drifted, red eyes downcast, through the crowds in the streets. People didn’t notice him. People never really looked. People made an unconscious space around him as he drifted down the cobbles. Quarantined, even now; separate from them—from humanity.He was lonely.He wouldn’t admit it to himself.He looked in on bright shops selling candy, jewelry, happiness... and felt even more unacknowledgedly alone. What did happiness look like for something like him? Was it possible? Was it even something that he should allow himself?Guilty as he was?
Relationships: Alice Cullen/Jasper Hale, Edward Cullen/Jasper Hale
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	1. Heedless of the Dust

At this point, Jasper was, more than anything, bored.

Maria had been leaning in the suite’s archway, watching, long enough now that Jasper’d begun to make a show of his business here solely for her benefit. He’d long ago grown disinterested enough in his little game, in and of itself, to simply end it; he continued now out of petulant spite. With his back to Maria, unable to watch her expression as he felt her mounting annoyance, his game was less satisfying than it might be, but things were altogether more interesting with her here, fuming, and he considered that a victory in itself. Years spent in Maria’s company meant he knew exactly how to _push her buttons_ , as they said these days. Doing so was one of his greatest joys. One of the few he had left to him.

“Hold the glass steady, darlin,” he breathed. 

The angelic creature holding the wine glass turned her wide eyes on him. 

“Wouldn’t want to spill, now,” he went on, “would we?”

The girl smiled, shivering in the chill of the room, and turned her attention back to the wine glass in her hands. She was near naked, one strap of her lacy black brassiere slid down her creamy shoulder, her short hair in beautiful disarray, wisps of it caught out and set aflame by the slanting sunlight coming in through the large window. Her big innocent eyes had been done up to appear even larger when he’d met her, more guileless, with cleverly applied makeup, but the gaudy stuff had long since smeared. Her pretty eyes were now sunken and black with misplaced mascara. It made her look even more fragile, somehow, with the smudged pigment there bruising that delicate skin. She looked worn. Not surprising. He’d been playing with her for… a while, now. 

He regarded her dispassionately. She shivered, yes, but her hand on the knife was steady; her hand on the cup steadied out now as well. Her little friend in the chair, on the other hand—shining dark hair and velvet skin and pert, rose-budded breasts—had just… _now_ , tipped beyond the point of ever shivering again, cold though her skin may grow. The blood dripped slowly into the latest glass with no pulse left to drive it. Plop. Plop. It was bordering on painful, the dramatic pause between drips, each one a fraction longer, each drop smaller. The well was dried up, it would seem, with twelve and what would soon be—he glanced again at the glass in his lovely assistant’s hand—one half wine glasses worth of blood lined up on the windowsill to show for it.

He would have thought there would be more.

“Oh, Jasper, look. Look! I’ve got it all! The last drop! She’s finally petered out, poor dear.”

His angelic assistant beamed and danced to place the last cup in its gleaming line at the window, then hurried over to jump into his lap, draping her arms—bloody knife loosely in hand—around his shoulders.

“I did good, didn’t I? I really did, didn’t I, Jasper?”

She nuzzled into his neck.

“Tell me I did good?”

Maria made a little sound that might be a laugh or a scoff from her vantage in the archway. Jasper could feel her disgust—and lust—and also her amusement. Her amusement most of all and always, a constant backdrop for the theatre of her emotion. Everything amused Maria. Everyone.

“No no no,” he said, pushing the girl back to balance on his knees. “You most certainly have not done _good_.” He shook his head at her solemnly. “You’ve killed your friend. See?” He watched her, her head still muddled, still confused, wanting to turn back but for the one tiny kernel of fear there, something he’d missed maybe, that warned her against it. “Just look at her,” he whispered. “She’s dead, sweetheart. Dead and cold on that chair over there behind you. Look.”

The fog of easy ecstasy he’d had the girl under he now yanked away. And then came a slow swallow, a terrible dawning of realization and the fearful glance she couldn’t help but take. The knife slipped from her now unsteady hand and clattered to the floor. She fell violently from his lap; seemed to curl into herself, a wail coming out of her so long and loud that it seemed to deflate her, diminish her, leaving her a shivering husk on the cold dusty wood of the floor, rocking this way and that as though swayed by a playful wind. 

He toed her gently aside so that he could stand. Walked slowly around the overstuffed chair that he’d occupied, barely moving, during the hours he’d toyed with her, and bent to retrieve the knife, wishing mostly for it all to be over—to be away from this room, at least, if he couldn’t manage to escape his own company completely. And hadn’t that been the point of all this? The real escape he’d needed, had been searching for before this latest bid for freedom had started; before he’d been waylaid into this distraction by his damnable curiosity? By his cruelty and his need to what—punish himself? Some stomach-churning form of self hatred had perturbed his everlasting boredom and spurred him on, that much was clear. Ended him here, in this sparse chilly room, with the woman he’d thought he’d been running from looking on scornfully and nothing but tormenting her to keep him from...something; some terrible fate.

“Oh no, no darlin, don’t cry. Shh, don’t you cry now, don’t.” He knelt before the broken girl, stroking her soft head. “Only one thing for those tears.” He stroked that fine hair once more.

Then his hand fell to her wrist, turning up her tiny palm, and he slipped the knife back into her soft, trembling hand. Her tear-streaked face he tipped up to his own with one gentle finger beneath her little chin.

“You miss your friend something awful, don’t you?”

A fresh sob punctuated by a vigorous nod. “Yes. Oh, god, I do. I do! Oh god, what have I done? Why would I—? W-what have I—?”

“Well then,” Jasper said, cutting her off with a beautiful smile and sending her floating on a wave of peace. He watched her face soften and her eyes become bright; wiped her leftover tears. “You know how to get to where she’s gone, don’t you? You sent her there, after all. You know the way. Seems to me, all that’s left is to go ahead and follow her.”

“Follow?” She said, weakly, uncertainly. A single fresh tear tumbled her cheek and clung to the point of her chin, luminous.

He squeezed her fingers tighter around the knife handle. 

“Simplest thing in the world,” he assured.

“Simple….”

“Easy as pie.”

She giggled wetly. 

“Easy as pie,” she repeated through a grin. “Pie. That’s funny, mister. Pie’s never easy. It’s a pain.”

“Have it your way,” he said, tipping the knife up to her throat. It remained poised there when he left her hand to its own devices, the tip just touching the skin. She stared up at him in bubbling wonder. He smiled. Winked. “Piece of cake, then.”

She giggled again and he tapped her nose; kissed her once, tenderly, atop her disheveled head admiring the fine down of her hair one last time. Then he rose, his smile vanishing; turned toward Maria and away from the girl, sweeping all his false contentment from her for good. Her pain seemed weak when it struck him. She may as well have been a rabbit in a trap. A mouse caught wriggling in the jaws of a fox. Her pleas fell on deaf ears. He’d had quite enough fun with her. Plenty. Time to have done with it. With her and this sad little scene he’d created.

The sobs didn’t last long after that, after he left her alone with her own emotions and the corpse of her dead friend and that convenient knife and not an ounce of pity from the strange, beautiful creatures that looked on, ignoring her suffering. The both of them stood as impassive as statues; as cold. The knife clattered one final time to the floor. Was followed shortly by the limp body of his lovely, unlucky, assistant.

“Finally,” he heard Maria sigh as he made his way to the windowsill. She sauntered into the room and crouched to dip her finger into a growing puddle. Tasting it delicately, she frowned, then shrugged and slid her finger through the mess again. “You know, I thought she would be sweeter?” She cleaned her finger once more, then flashed him a cruel grin, tracking his movement. After a moment her face hardened. “You’re not any less guilty if they do your dirty work for you, my love. The way you bend them with your little gift—so cruel.” She shook her head, mocking sympathy for the girl, then seeing her blow hadn’t landed she rolled her eyes and stood, brushing her skirt clean. “Nothing wrong with a quick snap of the neck now and then. You do not always have to play with your food. You are not yet too good to get your hands dirty like the rest of us.”

Jasper set the first drained glass down, admiring the glow of the sun through the thin red film that dirtied the bell of it. Shrugged. He didn’t feel guilt; wouldn’t recognize the taste of his own. He felt the emotion enough in others to know that much. It was everywhere, after all. And it was funny to him that Maria would attempt to make him feel guilt over this. He was personally convinced that Maria had never experienced guilt in her life. Imagine, her talking to him about guilt and innocence now. Her. It was funny.

He didn’t know if it was more funny, though, or more sad. He really didn’t know.

Jasper felt…. Well, he found he couldn’t finish the still-warm blood, which surely wasn’t a good sign. He felt, which was strange in and of itself. He felt. But what? Hell, maybe he did still feel some form of guilt for what he did—what he was. Maybe that’s what he’d been feeling all this time. Maybe every last one of his oversensitive emotions hadn’t been beaten to death back during the thick of the wars—the bad days that he’d been born again into. Maybe Maria was right. Maybe that’s why he’d run all this way; not to flee himself after all, or her, but to be alone with his guilt. To try to call it forth once more. Wake it. 

He surveyed the room; didn’t bother picking up the next glass of blood. It stank. The room stank like a field slaughter. And the way Jasper’s mouth watered at the stench of it, the way the disgust he felt at his watering mouth outweighed even his ever-prodigious hunger, his sharpened instinct, well, what more confirmation did he need, really?

Guilty as sin.

“Why did you follow me?” He looked Maria in the eyes at last. Allowed himself. She didn’t answer and he grew more disgusted yet in the pause. Turned away.

He knew why she’d come. He threw on his coat and adjusted the fedora he preferred to the fashionable newsboy hats that he felt made him look too much the child. Without fanfare or a look back, he walked out the door and left it up to Maria to follow.

She did, slamming the door as she exited into the cramped hall with a huff of annoyance that was entirely feigned. Her stride was quick without becoming unnaturally quick. Her tall boots were noisy and sharp. Her steps echoed, chasing him.

“I love you.”

He turned, skeptical grin climbing, eyebrow raised. She frowned, more a pout.

“Fine. I need you. I gave you as long as I could for your little tantrum, but now I need you back. The territory is threatened.”

“Will wonders never cease?”

When was it not?

She sighed and he had just enough warning sense to tense before he hit the wall. Plaster dust rained around him. He placed his large hand over the small one crushing into his chest with force enough to actually hurt.

“Be serious,” she said, a command if ever he’d heard one.

Then she kissed him; dug her fingers into his chest cruelly to drag him down toward her lips and threatened to rip his shirt. He pulled his lips away, pulled back to height, head bumping the wall and dislodging more dust.

She stared up at him and he met her gaze unflinching, unintimidated.

After a moment, she backed away from him with a light shove that buckled the crater in the wall that much deeper. Plaster dust snowed, flouring her dark hair, clinging to her long lashes, making her look the dusty little doll, too long on the shelf and begging to be played with.

Unlucky for her, really, how poor he found his appetite for games, suddenly.

“You would kick and scream the entire way back, yes? If I were to simply take you now, as is my right? You would do this to me.” A shaken breath, completely unnecessary. “Even knowing how I need you, you would do this.”

His face softened a shade, feeling a real hurt from her, hiding there behind her contrived exasperation at his stubbornness, her feigned feminine fragility, behind her hatred of this conflict in him that she couldn’t seem to fathom, that pulled him from her. He tried to lean in again and kiss reassurance back into her, moved as he always could be by her subtle, hidden depths, but she sidestepped his lips; she glared up at him coldly.

“Child,” she said, simply, and with that one word, she vanished.

To human eyes, should any have been present to witness her dramatic exit, she might as well have been a ghost, here one moment and gone the next. Jasper’s eyes, on the other hand, caught the barest moment of a moment when she was forced to glance back at him as she departed. He caught the betrayal in her eyes, plain for him to see—as if he needed to see to know. Accusing him. 

Guilty.

He knocked his head into the wall once more, heedless of the dust.

“Child,” he whispered.


	2. Soft through the Night Wood

Edward was no child, whatever tale his face might tell.

Carlisle’s new wife was sweet. She was caring. She was motherly. But she was no mother to Edward, no matter how much she might wish to be; how could she be when the memory of his own still burned so bright—her not 10 years in the ground?

With nearly 10 years gone in this new life of his, he was no child, no. Yet he was trapped in this body that resembled one; had been locked in this role where he was forced to act as one. He was nearly 27 years old—nearly 30. Old enough, surely, to be a man; to make his own way. Old enough by any standards.

His blood would have been hot if it were possible. His heart would have been pumping. He stalked along the roof line, watching his prey. It had been too long since he’d last fed—not very smart of him at all with all these people about, but needs must.

Proof or no proof, he would have to feed tonight. He watched. He waited. He wanted this prey—this particular hunt. This blood.

He needed proof.

His special gift was especially useful for leading him to the kind of men he hunted; the men he followed, hooked and reeled in by a stray thought in a pub or on a street corner—even sometimes exiting a church. He followed thoughts thick with blood and pain and death. He followed carefully. And for the sake of future victims, Edward would see to it that these beasts he hunted would find a kind of justice; their blood forfeit for their crimes.

Justice. His attempt at balance. An apology, maybe, or a desperate tipping of the scales back in his favor. As if it all wasn’t vanity anyway. He was damned. Irredeemable.

If he must kill—must do so to live as any creature ought to be able, not half-starved and under constant torment—let these men feed him. Let their prevented sins wash away his own. Let that be enough, somehow, to redeem him.

Since he’d broken free from Carlisle and the wife that would be mother, he’d been killing the vilest men that he could find. He’d gotten better and better at finding them; hunting them. He’d give them enough warning to make them uneasy; let them feel death’s gaze on their backs for days, weeks, before he’d attack. He’d listen to their thoughts and try to find some difference between him and them. Some hope. He’d watch, wait, letting the hate, the disgust, build up in him till it boiled over and finally their blood boiled past his lips and the entirety of the world was sweet indulgence. Life. There was something so true in the act of taking life. So primally right. Blood. Human blood. Life.

So much better than the animals Carlisle had him chasing through forests and parks. Better, surely, the tainted blood of these tainted men than the blood of an innocent deer walking soft through the night wood, soul spotless as a baptismal gown. Than even the relative innocence of a predator, a beast with no concept of right or wrong.

He’d known with the first drop that passed his lips that he was meant to prey on humans. Built for it. That his father’s diet was unnatural; unsatisfying and cruel. Just as he’d always suspected.

Better these men than innocents, human or no. Better their suffering than his.

But he needed proof. He needed proof of their depravity to make a kill, or—

Edward remembered the vividness of the man’s thoughts. The man—the innocent. Deer walking soft through the night wood; man that had made a murderer of him. He remembered the clarity of the thoughts, picture more than word; picture and color and nearly smell, the sensation was so strong. Murdered girls. Little girls. Babies. A string of blood-soaked hands with chubby fingers; torn dresses and flesh. Torn to pieces. Ribbons. And each vision red as blood.

He’d killed the man the same night, still new to his craft and not patient enough yet to wait. In truth, he was so hungry, malnourished, at the time that he hadn’t been able to resist—half mad as he was with the images pouring from the man’s head, unrelenting, horrible, goading. Too much. 

It wasn’t until it was far too late that Edward had realized that rather than memory, he was catching the torn flap of hallucination trailing from this man’s defective mind. Rather than reminiscing over his crimes, the man who now lay limp and gasping and dying in his arms was fleeing from terrible visions. Was innocent. A victim. His victim.

Crazy. The man had simply been crazy. Had been haunted by visions straight from the hell that Edward had been so quick to send the poor man towards that he’d picked up a ticket of his own in the bargain.

Playing god. And the devil. Playing. Perhaps he was a child after all.

But he was growing up fast out here in the world. Needs must.

This man, tonight, the one he stalked below, had murder on the brain. The man had been near salivating for a kill—at the thought of one—all night.

Edward could relate. He watched over the man as the both of them navigated the tight-packed streets. His anticipation rose as they wandered further and further from the nighttime crowds and into a perfect habitat for the hunt. He watched as the man drew his knife.

Edward made his move before the prostitute—the man’s intended victim—even knew she was in danger. The crack of his boot on the man’s shoulder when Edward dropped from the rooftop above was particularly satisfying, but muffled—nothing to human hearing. The man’s cry of surprise died behind Edward’s palm; he flailed for oxygen, his mouth and nose sealed. The knife fell to the ground, but the dirt-padded stone of the alleyway quieted the sound enough that the would-be victim’s step never faltered. She walked on, unafraid. Blissful in her ignorance. Edward waited for her footfalls to escape even his heightened hearing. His grip tightened on his victim and the alley must have seemed to miraculously empty. He imagined the girl turning at a sudden breeze, startled, only to find herself alone. Safe.

He’d always had an active imagination.

He let the murderer’s screams fly free across the empty rooftops he now navigated. Listened to them twist their way through the warren of old warehouses left long rotting near the docks, unable to stir any souls save a few hundred rats. Unlikely rescuers.

Edward reappeared, or would have seemed to reappear to the naked, human eye, coming to a stop so abruptly that it jarred his cargo’s already mistreated shoulder fully out of socket. A sharp cry, then silence. Water licked at the steel and concrete of the wharf in the distance. The thickly-grown rust on the buildings surrounding smelled a little like blood. Just enough like blood to make his mouth water.

The murderer, pooled at Edward’s feet, cradled his misaligned and useless arm and spent his borrowed breath pleading for mercy. Begging for it.

As if begging could save him.

Edward tried to convey the uselessness of begging to the man by stepping lightly onto his ankle, then lowering his foot slowly to the ground, disintegrating the bones beneath and leaving the tissue grotesquely flattened—spent chewing gum underfoot. It took a full ten seconds of wide-eyed staring shock for the message to finally find its way through the man’s abused nerves, then the begging was abandoned for screaming.

Edward smiled. He tipped the man’s head back with a fistful of hair and took a long look at the screaming face. Young. Not so much older than Edward should be. Not so much more inspiring, intelligent, than the stupid-eye’d doe of the night wood.

“Why—” Edward said quietly, and smiled wider when the screams died out so that the man might hear enough to save himself. He began again in the relative silence. “Why do you kill?”

“I don’t!” The man tried to get to his knees then abruptly fell back to sitting at the reminder of his obliterated ankle. “I swear I wasn’t gonna hurt her! What is she, your sister? I wasn’t gonna touch her, I swear to you—I swear. Please! Please please please!”

Back to begging. What a shame.

“Well, that’s clearly a lie,” Edward said, watching thoughts of capture and prison and guilt and lust and blood filter by; blood washing all of these thoughts red. He watched them spilling through the man’s bewildered head and sorrowed that they were so like all the thoughts of all the killer’s minds he’d searched before. So predictable. 

“Let’s see if we can’t get closer to the truth.”

The truth shared by both of them. By all killers like them. The reason for it. The source of the need for it.

Natural? Or were they unnatural aberrations? Was it pardonable? Or was it, as he personally could not doubt, truly unforgivable?

What made this man any different from him? There was something, surely, that separated them, and more than even the blood, Edward craved this answer. He held off his hunger, held it at bay, in favor of exploring this question.

Did he deserve to die just as horribly as the man before him? More horribly yet? Or was he, like the shark, the lion, part of some unknowable plan. Wolf stalking deer through the long night wood.

Hours later—when Edward’s disgust at his own cruelty and bloodlust was great enough to make him pause and think—he found the murderer was begging again, this time for death. And death came, swift and painless, as soon as Edward really looked at what he’d made of the man—what he’d done. He gave in to the burning in his throat and sunk his teeth deep and drank his fill. 

He never really enjoyed the kill. His disgust with himself never let him fully participate. Not a drop was ever wasted, though. At least there was that. Not a drop was ever spilled. And even denying himself conscious pleasure as he felt he must, the blood—that moment in the blood—was better than anything he’d ever known. It was worse than anything he could ever imagine.

Needed it. Despised his need. Wanted it. Denied his wanting.

He dumped the body after all was said and done, coming down from the high of it all and too ashamed to look as he slid it into the slow, sludgy river a few blocks from the warehouse where he’d made his kill. He waited for the bricks he’d tied to the body to do their work, still not able to look until the last visible proof had been swallowed by the river; then he’d watched the smooth, greasy surface of the water slip by till the threat of dawn and detection had driven him to his rented room to wait out the day.

He dreaded the moment when he’d catch his reflection in the mirror upon returning—those haunted red eyes that spoke of his fragile willpower, his childish need for rebellion. Even now, in the heart of it, he could admit the inherent childishness in his need to go off on his own—to taste forbidden fruit.

He was nearly twenty-seven—nearly thirty. Old enough now to know for certain that he would never grow up. Outwardly—and he often feared within—he would remain nothing more than a child until he was allowed the death that had been stolen from him. If ever that day would come.

How many would be alive now, he often wondered, if Carlisle had found some other surrogate child? One more docile, more apt to self-denial. And how many more would be dead by these killer’s hands—the ones he’d ended? Where did the balance fall? Surely, in his favor, life for life.

Surely. But was that enough?

He lay on his useless bed and retreated deeper into his thoughts. The white ceiling above him glowed and shifted with the crawling progress of the day. It dulled and shadowed and was shaded progressively darker and darker until the world outside became safe enough for a monster like him to roam free once more. Then he rose.

His life would be so much more tolerable if he could only sleep.

He knew he didn’t deserve the relief.

He drifted, red eyes downcast, through the crowds in the streets. People didn’t notice him. People never really looked. People made an unconscious space around him as he drifted down the cobbles. Quarantined, even now; separate from them—from humanity.

He was lonely.

He wouldn’t admit it to himself.

He looked in on bright shops selling candy, jewelry, happiness... and felt even more unacknowledgedly alone. What did happiness look like for something like him? Was it possible? Was it even something that he should allow himself?

Guilty as he was?

Where was a piano when he needed one?

He walked into a tavern and when the paid piano player went on break, he slid into the seat on a bet that once he started playing he wouldn’t be asked to stop. Free services weren’t generally discouraged. And he played. And no one bothered him, just as he thought. And it started off happy, the music, because playing again had made him feel hopeful. But the music, as with his disposition, soon sank back into a moody, melancholy refrain.

He stared at the faces around him. Heard their secrets and shames and hopes. And he was lonely.

He nodded and rose when the piano man returned, eager to discourage Edward offering for free what he earned his living providing. Edward rose with a nod and he kept his eyes to the dirty floor as he walked out the door.

And it was a long time—too long—before he realized that he was being followed. He opened his mind, finally, to the stranger that had gained on him, and was met by not a thing but a trendy—and quite honestly, risque—song for his troubles. The mind was cold. Crystalline. Familiar.

Vampire.

“There’s something wild about you child that’s so contagious. Let’s be outrageous. Let’s misbehave.”

The vampire was singing now, out loud. Step for step the vampire mirrored his own gait, yet made it no secret that he followed, feet loud on the pavement.

Edward stopped. Turned. Silence reigned for a minute, or perhaps five. Perhaps fifty, what was time to him now? Whatever time did pass for them was tense with promise and threat.

A smile cut through the dark.


	3. Tawdry Sensuality

“Caught a show last night,” the unknown vampire said, twenty paces away. “Down by the water.”

Edward opened his mouth to speak, but with a quick blur those twenty paces halved and words failed him. The nearest streetlamp revealed a young man, blonde and typically beautiful. His accent flowed slow and rich out of him; warm molasses. Southern. Charming.

“It struck me for it’s violence—I find that any entertainment that isn’t violent nowadays, though, is full of a… tawdry sort of sensuality, particular to this decade. Don’t you?” He paused, nodding at Edward’s silence. Went on as if he’d been answered. “Quite. On the whole, I prefer the violence.” 

The vampire studied him, taking his time, silent and confident as if waiting for Edward to grasp his meaning.

Edward knew full well what he meant. He had been watching Edward last night as he fed and more than fed. Undoubtedly. But why? And why come forward like this, now?

“So…” The man was close enough to reach out and brush a bit of dust off of Edward’s lapel—which he did, making Edward want to flinch away. He resisted. “What,” the vampire said, “did that poor man ever do to you?” His smile spread, slow as his drawl.

Edward searched the man’s thoughts for something, anything, to go on. Caught a name.

“Jasper? Your name is Jasper?”

A quick hitch of that smile. “Well well. A mind reader,” the vampire said, sounding impressed. Ephemeral tendrils of curious thought were suddenly readable in his mind, but faded away just as quickly into obscurity. A quiet one. Hard to read. Damn. 

“You’ve got me,” the man went on, dipping into a shallow bow, now, almost mocking. “At your service, Edward.”

A letter spun at Edward through the dark. He caught it without thinking, frowned when he saw that it was a piece of his own correspondence, no doubt nicked from his rooms, and Jasper laughed. Stopped. Stared hard at Edward, his smile slowly fading.

“Bit young, for all that guilt.” And the music rose deliberately in the man’s thoughts, a purposeful cover against Edward’s talent. “Aren’t you?”

Edward wanted to argue. Argue since he couldn’t bring himself to run. Was about to when—

Jasper laughed, sharp and staccato and Edward could feel in himself a strange and sudden urge to do likewise. “I mean nothing by it.” A smile spread, while from the strange vampire’s thoughts…nothing—more music, sweet and slow. “Edward.” Jasper said, as if rolling the sounds around in his mouth, discerning its taste the way one would whiskey, or wine. “What say me and you go listen to some jazz and pretend to drink and we talk for a bit?”

And it was jazz that flooded Jasper’s mind now and almost covered the thought,  _ young _ , almost obscured the memory attached to the word, so clear that Edward could almost smell the burnt-incense char of the pyre and felt branded by the blazing red eyes of a newborn vampire as they stared lifeless from a severed head, the head just one more appendage tossed amidst a hundred jumbled parts being consumed by that funeral blaze.  _ Ah, there it is,  _ he caught above the music.  _ There’s the heart of it _ .

_ Guilty. _

“Why?” Edward asked, not sure if he wanted elaboration on the invitation or the man’s mostly-hidden thoughts. Every instinct he had told him to cut bait and run; that this was dangerous, deadly. Edward could see the truth in what this vampire had said. He  _ was _ young. Painfully young. Out of his depths in this uneven exchange.

Jasper closed the distance between them, unhurried, and laid a hand on Edward’s shoulder.

“Maybe…” he said. “Hell, maybe because lonely isn’t a very agreeable place to live.” The words were barely there, quiet as his thoughts. “Maybe that’s something you learn, with age.” 

The music rose. How would Edward ever hear this man, understand his motives, for all the music inside?

“I’m not particularly lonely.” He squared his shoulders, too tense.

“That right?” The vampire said. “Well, I’m not particularly patient.” But he said it with a grin that grew sharp as he leaned in, whispering. “We all have our gifts, Edward.”

And Edward wondered why he’d ever feared the older man; doubted him. It would be nice, for one night, not to be lonely. He’d ached with it—loneliness—for so long, and it was so nice, even now, just being close to someone again. How long had it been since anyone he wasn’t in the act of killing had been so close? Had touched him? He shivered, feeling the weight of Jasper’s hand suddenly. A useless action, shivering. A clinging reminder of his recent humanity.

“I’ve... never been inside a speakeasy,” Edward admitted, and then he laughed at how preposterous that was.

_ Young. _

“Sounds like just the place we should head, then, doesn’t it?”

And it did. Suddenly it did. It sounded exciting.

Jasper flashed a fabricated smile and Edward swallowed. Another human tick, still plaguing him after all these years. Ten years gone, yet humanity still clung to him.

_ So young. _

A private club they stood outside was closing down for the night. Men, still laughing or arguing flooded the sidewalk, parting around them, giving them an unconscious respective distance on nothing more than animal instinct. Jasper and he remained motionless; rocks in a hectic stream—the scene a small mirror of their immortal lives.

Edward ignored the meaningless crowd.

“Fine,” he said. He was beginning to feel the limitless possibility of the night. “If you’re paying.” And this time it was him that smiled.

His answer started this Jasper fellow laughing; had him patting Edward’s shoulder. Edward would normally resent so patronizing a gesture, but after so long, any touch at all was…. His smile didn’t fade.

“Of course,” Jasper said, hand sliding down to tug once at Edward’s wrist and then releasing it as the enigmatic vampire walked, humans still parting gently around him, down the busy street. “I pride myself on being a gentleman.” His voice faded with distance. He made no effort to speak up. “My invitation, my treat.”

Edward felt drunk. He’d never been drunk, didn’t know what it would feel like, and never would now…. But his thoughts were getting away from him. Jasper was walking away and the feeling of warmth that Edward had missed for so long seemed to fade as he left so Edward followed. It was stupid. Naive. Irresponsible. No matter.

He followed.

Edward followed.

Jasper was sure the boy would—didn’t bother looking back or slowing his pace any more than was required for the sake of the surrounding humans. He made his way down the now-emptied street. Was looking for somewhere with that devil-may-care ambiance, with that bit of thrill, for young Edward’s sake, but where a private conversation would still be a possibility. This late at night, the task would prove more difficult. He drifted along with the rest of the crowds seeking a bit of night life. Drifted into a part of town where the usual gin joint kicked the last drunk out at morning light so they could mop up all the alcohol and vomit and blood of the night—and in the case one such establishment he’d lost a few hours in, pin up all the left-behind panties on a wall for future collection by their grinning, unashamed owners—to make it presentable for the next night’s crowd. Luckily, he wasn’t searching blind.

He followed the music. Followed the slow-plucking opioid pulse of a beat toward the joint he’d been drawn into last night, and he turned now—grinned—as his whispered password got them both in the door. The boy felt nervous under the manufactured calm Jasper provided; excited. How long had it been since he’d felt anything similar himself? How long since he’d felt anything that wasn’t borrowed? How long had it been that he’d felt only vicariously?

At least now he had his guilt.

He tipped his hat to the bartender and held up a bill, exchanged it for a bottle and two clean glasses. Swung by the band as they put down their instruments for a break and filled their glasses generously. Passed some coin over the palm of the bassist and received a gap-toothed grin at his whispered request; a nod. Retreated toward the shadows and a makeshift corner booth where he set up their props and then sprawled, chuckling as the boy approached and sat cautiously, on the very edge of the bench, back ramrod straight and eyes darting furiously.

“Relax,” Jasper said through his lingering smile. He projected his own calm onto the boy and basked in its amplification, sinking in as it reverberated, magnified between them. Edward melted back into his backrest and smiled, shaking his head.

“That’s you then,” Edward said, toying with his glass, watching the amber pool of light it cast on the table dance with the slosh of liquid. “Your gift. I can feel you doing it but I can’t seem to make myself care. It should be infuriating.” He laughed and looked Jasper’s way. “Is this what it is to feel drunk?”

Edward’s head fell against the bench’s worn back. His neck was long, stretched taut as it was, and every muscle was defined, perfectly shaded by the low lamplight.

“Poor creature,” Jasper said, chuckling, internal music rising to cloud his thoughts of Edward’s neck and the forced conversation a bold attempt to obscure the rest, “Coming to this life without any drunken regrets. Imagine it.”

Jasper concentrated a moment, drawing on a slowly-fading memory, one drunken night from his past life. He projected and Edward laughed again and for just a moment that laugh sounded eerily familiar.

“This. Now this is interesting.” Edward’s head tilted, long neck strained, and his eyes found Jasper’s, his smile melted away with a new confusion. “Now, who’s Peter?”

Peter. He hadn’t even realized he’d thought the name—a name which brought on a whole remembered range of emotions, guilt merely the first to return, apparently. And Edward, mirroring Jasper as he was, was swept up for a moment in the profound rush of it all; was bombarded cruelly before Jasper could manage to sever the tie.

Edward was back at the edge of his seat, clear headed now and more wary than ever. He was poised to run but not running; not moving. Was more curious than afraid, it would seem. And that was familiar too, wasn’t it?

Peter.

Jasper banished the name, reigned in his wild emotions, shoving them wherever they would fit to sort through later at his leisure. He looked back to Edward, grinned, and in short order had the boy back under the influence. Pushed him harder.

“What else did your sheltered human life deny you, Edward? I’m curious now.”

The band had started up again, slow and lush and throbbing with a dark, delicious beat—just what Jasper had ordered. Edward was distracted for a long while by the music, and Jasper let himself mirror the boy again, get a buzz off him and the wonder that the music had him wrapped in.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Edward finally said, turning back and leaning hard into the bench.

Jasper smiled; pushed the boy further.

“Does it matter?”

“Ha. Not as much as it seemed to a moment ago. That really is unfair.” The boy took a moment to gather his thoughts under Jasper’s redoubled ministrations. “It only matters theoretically, I suppose,” Edward said finally, laughing again and scanning the room lazily. All those riled emotions strained their makeshift lids at the sound of that laugh. The boy moved closer to Jasper who had the better view of the room and its patrons. His voice came hushed and maybe even a bit slurred—Jasper was impressed with himself.

“You asked what I’d been denied. You might have saved yourself some time asking what I hadn’t—I was seventeen when that life ended,” Edward said. “Was sheltered through my childhood. I’d done nothing, you see. Experienced nothing. And for nearly ten years now I’ve been shut up like a monk in his cell, denied the only pleasure this new life has on offer—”

“The  _ only _ pleasure?” Jasper’s eyes skipped from the curve of a young woman’s breast, from her delicate neck and wicked grin; they found Edward’s. “ _ Only _ ? Surely we are not relegated to one singular pleasure, even now. Or have you exhausted all other passions entirely in your short years? If so, I believe you’re due a round of applause at the very least. Rather prolific of you.”

If the boy could have blushed he would have at that.

“If I’d...  _ felt _ any such passions I would have at least made a try at it, I’m sure,” he said, frowning after, Jasper’s manipulation making him more forthright than he might have wished. “I’ve never… ” Edward’s earnest eyes found Jasper’s, the innocence of their expression a strange contrast with their sinister color. “The one who brought me into this life... sometimes I’ve heard him worry that I was too young. That I’m not whole. And I… I’ve never….”

So young. 

_ So young _ .

Edward might have resented the thought if he’d been in his right mind. But Jasper was moving now, distracting him, and when Jasper leaned in and whispered to him, “Keep quiet, now,” he forgot what he’d been thinking in any event.

It started slowly, a buzz in his skin, brushing soft beneath his lips, licking at his nipples, washing down his chest and sweeping his sensitive stomach, dancing across his palms and flowing up his arms, feathering the arches of his feet and wrapping his calves, brushing his thighs as it flowed up... up, coming closer, gathering, concentrating, his member filling at the thrill of it. He felt connected. Electrified. He wanted. For the first time, he wanted to touch, to feel, to slide into someone. To connect. He wanted.

“What are you—?”

“Quiet,” Jasper whispered.

Edward’s eyelids were drooping, beyond his control. The room lost its focus, and all the while the buzzing, building, gathering, continued. The music faded till the slow sensual thump of the drum could have been his own heartbeat. The room might as well have been empty. Gathering. Building. His pants were uncomfortable, unbearable, and he leaned into the table, head down, and reached in and adjusted himself and felt for himself that he wasn’t broken, wasn’t defective. There was purpose behind his erection now. There was drive. He wanted. He could want. He wanted to—

“Shhhh.” 

Jasper’s whisper blew over the sensitized skin at Edward’s neck and only then did Edward manage to pull his hand away—to stop touching himself. He’d never allowed himself to touch himself before, even to test— It wasn’t right to— He’d never wanted to—

An image—clear, very clear—of Jasper’s hand around his aching erection and he couldn’t discern the origin of the thought. His own? Jasper’s? He shook his head; dismissed it, or forbade it. It wasn’t right to— It wasn’t right.

He buried his head in his arms on the table. Bit down on his jacket to keep himself quiet. Couldn’t stop his hips jerking, his muscles tightening. He wanted to touch—wanted to be touched—and all the while the buzz, gathering, pooling hot inside, tightening, building, building. Each breath left ragged, pulled sharp. Closer. Closer.

There. There there there. 

He curled into himself. Bit so hard he was surprised he didn’t taste his own blood. Clamped the edge of the table so tightly in his hand that the thick wood creaked. He might have said the man’s name, “Jasper.” Might have said anything. Whatever he’d said brought that thought again to the surface of Jasper’s mind—singular—that name.

_ Peter. _

And it brought too the wave of emotion that followed the thought—mostly pain.

“Who is he?” Edward asked as soon as he could, sure he shouldn’t, lifting his eyes to read Jasper’s answer… only to find himself alone. Alone and sitting in the first speakeasy he’d ever dared enter, at twenty-seven years old, nearly thirty, clearheaded and sitting in his own cooling semen.

Alone again. He felt like a child lost in a crowd.

He wandered. Shunned the people clogging the streets because he wanted so badly to reach out. Wanted it too fiercely. Was too tempted now to feel something—anything. At any cost. Anything that could rival this blazing new experience. Could bury it.

He waited for a reappearance that he knew would never come. For Jasper. For too long—embarrassingly long. And all the while—even knowing it was Jasper’s gift that had brought him such pleasure and not the man himself, and knowing that he was twisting it all—he couldn’t banish the man from his thoughts.

It was a torment to be shut up in his room through the day; locked in his waking dream. Moreso now than it had been. The cruelty of it was keener—sharper. It was painful to lie in his useless bed and keep his hand from straying—his mind from conjuring images and emotions; a fragment of tune, a scent, a look. Would he want again as he had that night? Would he feel? If he touched himself now would he— It was a battle that he hadn’t the strength to win, in the end.

He always gave in to his own desires, in the end. First for blood. Now for this. Cradling himself in his hand like he’d never allowed—wanted—before and Jasper’s smile a wicked glinting sickle in a memory that remained forever crisp. Too clear. That haunted him with its perfect semblance of reality. A fever-dream. A lightning strike in the desert. And it made him feel less lonely to think on it, which was the worst of it—to touch himself with the memory playing, clear as crystal, in his head or with fantasies built so well that they would surely threaten his sanity later. It banished his loneliness, in those close hot moments, to build with his own hand that great tension—that gathering, gathering, gathering climb toward a release which he woke from each time alone.

Lonely.

It was torture.

It was only a matter of time before he went crawling back to Carlisle.

He was a child to think he’d last on his own for long.


	4. Rudderless

He’d gone back to Maria in the end; always knew he would. Always knew he’d hate it—resent her. Always knew he’d long for freedom again.

It wasn’t the loneliness of it all that really got to him.

It  _ was _ the loneliness of it all. It had been bearable with Peter who understood his suffering without needing to be told; who silently shared Jasper’s guilt and fear and disgust and sadness and… guilt—there was always more guilt to go around than anything. It had been bearable before Peter, even more so with Peter, and it was now unbearable without. Jasper couldn’t forget. He couldn’t go back to what was when he knew what could be.

By the time Peter came back—with Charlotte—Jasper was desperate enough to tag along, though it pained him every moment to live in that state of constant loss. He knew what could be; didn’t want to dwell on what was. It was painful there, mired in the unending loss of Peter. It was surprising that he felt anything at all at the loss of Maria, let alone so  _ much _ .    
It was painful, the loss of accountability. Of purpose.

Painful; yet better than what was.

When he again yearned for freedom—found he’d merely traded one cage for another—he left Peter to his life and to Charlotte with only minimal pain, a sting quick and sharp as the break, and with barely a second glance. Or so he told himself. He headed North. He headed North alone.

But he never handled alone well. Or freedom, now he thought of it.

So when he walked into a diner and a skinny little thing with black hair and strange eyes walked up to him and scolded him for keeping her waiting, he’d taken her hand. He’d apologized.

He’d held it ever since.

She saw the future—their future. Had it all mapped out. After all he’d been through, he was happy to follow. Happy not to have to lead at all. To go along with any scheme she could dream up, even if it meant saying goodbye to human blood.

He let her rule him in everything. It made living easier. It gave him space enough to feel again. Everything. Even the good things, eventually. Even the good.

But the blood was difficult to part from. How was life possible without it? What had this everlasting life of his been built on if not it? If not blood? He’d fought wars for it. Killed thousands for it. Thousands of his own kind, let alone the countless humans.

Without the blood he was rudderless. Lost. And she guided him. They traveled through the north, nomads, and at times he couldn’t bear the similarity to his wandering days with Peter. When his thirst was at its keenest it was the hardest. He lost himself for whole days in his perfect memory. He wished for death. Lived again the days of wandering with Peter, constantly aware of Peter’s displaced love. Jasper felt wounded where the tie had been severed. Was rubbed raw each day anew by the indifference that had come to replace the love that had been between them. Was it so easy to transfer that love to a new owner? How was it so easy? He’d never understand.

Yet he could feel that it was, for Peter at least. Every day he’d felt it.

“I can’t think of that time,” Peter had told him once. “Without reliving it—the horror of it.”

“Can’t think of me?” Jasper had asked. Pointless. Who better than him knew the answer to that?

“I have to believe… that it never happened. Any of it. For my own sanity that door must stay shut.”

Maybe Jasper didn’t know how to love if love was meant to be so easily erased, forgotten, ripped up and transplanted. Perhaps he loved all wrong.

Perhaps he’d been living his life wrong as well, if the best memories of his life were the worst of Peter’s. If their time together was something Peter would sooner forget entirely. Had to forget.

At the time, thoughts of their time together had been the only things keeping Jasper alive; sane at least. His happiest times; a nightmare. It was hard to fathom, yet easy to feel. Jasper felt the truth of it every day. Felt Peter’s joy and excitement and love; the light that Jasper had lost and that he had craved. Knew that he fed off of whatever light spilled over after Charlotte was through with it. Knew that he had nothing to trade for those scraps. Felt how he drained Peter dry with his need for it, with his very presence.

Fed off Peter’s leftover love. Like a vampire. It was enough to make him laugh. It was funny.

But Alice liked his love well enough. Alice had so much love in her he could never drain her dry. No matter how he tried.

And he had.

He followed Alice. Kept hold of her hand. She promised the pain he endured in purging himself of human blood would lessen with time and it did. Slowly. She promised he’d find himself again in this new life she’d orchestrated and she provided the compass he could follow in the meantime. He took her direction. He let her navigate.

And there was light. Light enough even for him.

So when she’d spoken of family, he had light enough of his own stockpiled inside that the curiosity pushed aside the fear. When she’d walked them up to a home—a home, think of it—and had knocked on the door, had introduced them so politely that wariness and confusion turned to indulgence on their host’s faces, well, just standing next to her had found him included.

The Cullen's home held no dark corners. The love and contentment were palpable; they filled every room. Hung in the air. Every breath in this room forced it into him, the light. Terrifying him. Nourishing him. It was more than even Alice could provide. And how could he bear more?

How could he ever survive here?

How could they let a monster like him into this place? Were they mad? He felt how his presence polluted the peace; dirtied the foyer. He hadn’t dared advance further, even with Alice’s encouragement. She’d danced off to talk amongst her peers, walked further into their light.

He wanted to crumble into the earth. Fought a desperate battle with his legs every moment to stand his ground. He deserved this. He’d worked so hard for any scrap of happiness. He deserved what he’d won here. He deserved this.

_ You know better. _

Edward heard the thought as he descended the stairs and looked up from his book only to be met with their empty foyer, the front door swung wide on the spring evening.

Curious, he set the book gently on the bottom stair and walked out into the night, following the ephemeral music of thought. Their guest was secretive. The tune they chose to obscure their thoughts was… effective.

Lately, wherever his family might wind up in their constant bid for obscurity, a garden would sprout, as if by magic, always catered to their peculiar schedule. Night blooms reigned in the garden Edward entered, their delicate bouquet arranged carefully and with purpose. Fireflies talked amongst themselves as they feasted on the snails that Esme raised to tempt them. Her fairy gardens, she called them. In the last decade she’d been perfecting them; the latest in her string of hobbies, of which they were all guilty of collecting. Immortality lent itself to collecting hobbies. 

In the center of this particular fairy garden sat a lost boy. Edward stood for a moment listening to the melody that spilled from his head. Familiar. Same song, different tune.

How preposterous that they should meet again now. How impossible.

He sat a good distance away out of respect. He averted his eyes. Closed his mind to even the music that came from the newcomer. Out of respect. Out of fear that the lost boy in the fairy garden would hold true to form and disappear at the first sign of detection. Would disappear again.

“Jasper,” he breathed, grimacing, waiting. Fully expecting disappointment. Unable to quash the hope that lay, unacknowledged, just beneath that expectation.

The lost boy stilled. He turned. He held form.

He laughed. Once. Desperate. Then his hands wound into his hair, pulling his head to his knees, protective, and Edward was struck by how boyish this gesture made him appear. How young. How unlike the enigmatic figure that had haunted Edward’s memory for decades. This body that Jasper inhabited was nearly as young as Edward’s, he now realized.

“I don’t recall asking for company,” Jasper said, voice muffled, while from his mind, loud enough to break the beat of song and Edward’s careful inattention came a contradictory plea:  _ don’t go don’t don’t don’t _ .

“I don’t recall inviting you into my garden.” The words left Edward’s mouth before rational thought could stopper them. He sat, breathless and unable to speak and glad for it. Waited for the inevitable, knowing that he’d deserve it after manifesting his own fears into horrible reality.

He was an idiot. Still a child. Forever a child.

“Well,” Jasper said, not disappearing and in point of fact sounding vaguely amused. “Seeing as I’ve been assured by a reliable source that I’ll be joining your little family, I took the liberty of inviting myself into my future garden.” His hands fell away and he rose to sitting once more, still facing away from Edward, back still stiff with whatever turmoil had sent him fleeing the house. “It’s a very nice garden.” And then he did turn. Offered a forced smile.

“I’ll be sure to pass the compliment along to Esme.” Edward assured. He felt he wasn’t wanted. Felt he should go. Almost said as much. Almost rose.

“I'd be grateful if you didn't go," Edward heard;paused. "Please,” Jasper breathed. “Stay.”

And Edward smiled. “You know, reading minds is supposed to be  _ my _ specialty.” He didn’t move to rise. Watched a firefly land on Jasper’s shoulder, sending out its steady sigal, lighting the sleepy hum of the night. Seeing no response, it eventually moved on. All creatures, apparently, were desperate for communication; connection. Just as desperate as he was himself. The small insight offered him no comfort.

“I’d be grateful if you didn’t do that, either,” Jasper finally said, eyes on Edward when Edward finally lost the firefly in the far distance and came back to himself.

“You read me,” Edward said, “I read you. Fair reciprocation.”

“Hmm,” Jasper said appreciatively. “Can’t make you stop, I suppose.”

“In point of fact, you can—”

“Won’t make you stop, I should say.” He shook his head, eyes distant. “I won’t  _ make _ you do anything.”

Jasper rose, face lit slightly, the look of dread highlighted, by the warm light from the glowing house. He looked down then and some of the dread melted off to reveal a playful smile. Edward frowned; wondered once again who the mind reader was.

“Unless you ask real nice, that is.” Threw Edward a wink.

If Edward could blush he would have. If he’d had the time before he was distracted again by the dread on Jasper’s gold-lit face, he would have blustered, lied, deflected. He remained quiet, wrapped up in taking in every detail. Storing it up. Any moment could be the last. Any one.

“She’s convinced them,” Jasper said. “Smug about it, too. God, I love her smug.”

And the dread didn’t leave but was covered, mostly, by some kind of hardened acceptance that obscured itself in turn with an artful smile. Jasper held out a hand to Edward. Smiled in earnest when they were palm to palm and he could pull Edward to standing; could move in close and pluck a fallen petal from Edward’s hair. Edward suffered it all with patience. Recorded and reveled in every touch. Strained to keep his emotion off his face, knowing the effort was pointless. 

Reciprocation. What could they ever really hide from one another?

“Be calling you brother soon enough, wait and see.”

Wait and see. Edward’s age was showing. The phrase didn’t hold nearly enough permanence to assuage his fears. The lost boy in the garden, the enigmatic stranger on the jazz-soaked city street, Jasper’s physical presence would always be an ephemeral thing; surely it wouldn’t last. Couldn’t. Surely he’d disappear any moment. Any one now.

Edward’s memory of this encounter, on the other hand, would remain brutally eternal. Would muddle itself with intricate fantasy, as their last encounter had. He watched it all, fearful of participation but unable to stop himself reaching out. Desperate. Too desperate. Sure to manifest his fears into horrible reality.

Dreading that inevitable last moment, Edward watched. He listened.


	5. All Halves

“He’s been listening in for weeks and you’ve known, surely you’ve known, and you’re only now saying anything. What’s your angle?”

Her, scolding him. Again. It would be funny if it wasn’t so infuriating.

She’d known—known that every night while he was losing himself inside her to forget the burn in his throat, the constant craving, Jasper had been inviting Edward into bed with them. She’d been aware because he’d told her and she’d gone along with it. She conspired. Made a show of it. But still she scolded. Now she scolded.

Jasper had never regretted taking her hand, but sometimes….

“We’ve been tormenting the poor boy. I couldn’t have guessed until I saw him leave—he’ll leave if we don’t stop, Jasper. Surely you felt—”

“I was, to put it mildly, distracted, sweetheart.”

But he had. He’d felt it. Fed off that desperation and self-loathing, even. Jasper had never  _ made _ the boy feel anything. Edward had never asked him nice enough. Had never asked. But that pettiness, that meanness, inviting Edward in knowing the boy couldn’t help but peek and letting him feel what he would, well… it took the sting of his own self-hatred away like nothing else could. In the moment at least. Call it a transference. So, had he known exactly what Edward was feeling every single night, kept tabs on the boy every minute of the day, every moment? Of course. How could he not? Was he a good enough person to stop prodding at the wound?

Who the hell did she think he was? Certainly she knew better than to think he was good. A good person. She’d been trying to teach him that trick for years. Surely she knew what he was by now; his limits.

But she was watching him with big eyes and a big heart and expectations that he knew he’d have to reach for. She was waiting for him to make it right. There was no blame. Only love. Only her sure belief in his goodness. And he knew he’d have to fix this.

For her and for Edward, for their sakes, and… and for his own, he’d have to.

The boy was all halves as he sat on the floor of his room, disarray surrounding his perfect stillness. He looked pulled in two, a half-packed suitcase halfway in his lap. The clothes inside were perfectly folded, the rest had been flung in the general direction of the dresser by the looks of it. His eyes were full of pain. His mouth was twisted up in a quavering smile.

“I’ll stop,” Jasper said immediately, entering Edward’s room.”It was childish of me and I apologize.”

“If you’re already damned,” Edward whispered as if to himself, lips fluttering softly and words nearly inaudible, even to Jasper, “what’s one more sin? If your very nature damns you, what’s to stop you piling on sin after sin after sin after sin until finally….”

He looked up, eyes cutting through Jasper and into some world beyond until they sharpened into focus.

“I don’t want you to stop. And so I have to leave. It’s the only thing for it. I have to go.”

“You’re not talking sense.” Jasper couldn’t even get a read on Edward’s emotions, snarled as they were, contradictory as they were, and so he leaned in the doorway, prepared to stop Edward from leaving if necessary, and he soothed the boy enough to get something coherent out of him. “I know you’re suffering but— What’s this crisis over it all? In plain English.”

Edward’s eyes fluttered shut in relief as he felt the touch of Jasper’s power. He frowned. One more lie. What was one more promise broken, in the end? Perhaps Edward’s predicament was more understandable than Jasper had realized.

“Guess I asked for it, mmm?” Edward chuckled, let his face fall too blank after. All those endearing human tics, faded to nothing by years of this life. It tore at Jasper to realize. Something so small and yet…. “You left that night,” Edward went on. His eyes opened on Jasper’s. “The first time we met.”

“Yes.”

“You left me alone.”

And Jasper paused at this, confused. Understanding. Not wanting to admit to that understanding.

“I left you how I found you, Edward.”

Edward grimaced. Nodded. And Jasper hated himself all the more. When would it be enough? When would he be able to leave the boy be?

“You left me alone with a memory that can never fade. And in all this time, I’ve never felt anything to match it. I’ve been alone, all alone with only it for company, and I haven’t  _ felt _ anything—not for anyone—not since you....”

He faltered, eyes unfocused, as if trapped in memory. The lost look on his face was one more wound. If Edward could have cried, he would have. Jasper was forced to look away.

“And yet, you don’t speak to me now,” Jasper said, as if in defense. “Don’t come when I invite you. You could be with me—”

“As a joke,” Edward said. “As your...plaything.” He dismissed the thought with a shake of the head. Closed his eyes. His pale face shone brilliant with long-polished sorrow. “I don’t love you,” he said. “I know that much. So... why do I desire you?”

Jasper strode forward, sat near the boy. The open window provided a symphony of small living sound as backdrop. A lazy damp breeze swayed the curtain. Jasper was eager to be distracted. He didn’t deserve it. He turned his attention back to Edward.

“Why indeed?” he said, settling in. “You show me the man who says he knows why anyone desires anyone in this world and I’ll show you a liar.” He brought up an arm and pulled Edward in to lean against him. The boy sighed at the touch and Jasper’s guilt flared.

_ Monster _ .

By a shift of expression, he understood that Edward had caught the thought. By Edward’s silence, he understood that the boy agreed. Or at least did not vehemently disagree.

Fair enough. 

“I’m sorry I left you alone,” Jasper offered. “That night.” He tightened his grip on Edward’s arm for a moment. Searched for words. Excuses. Hated himself for it. Couldn’t stop himself searching. But he could stop himself using any of them on Edward. Aloud. He could do that much. 

“I’ve been… evil, you see. No other word for it. I’ve been so evil, for so long… I’d wager my gauge for evil deeds is all but broken, but...now I know the cost of my actions that night, I am sorry for it all. I’m not yet that far gone that I don’t regret. That I don’t feel….”

“Guilt.” Edward plucked the unspoken word neatly out of the air.

Jasper wanted to object. Wanted to defend himself. He stopped. Made himself stop. He nodded instead. No excuses. Struck out once more for the truth with his next words. Had to warn the boy. Warn him if he couldn’t protect him. Couldn’t spare him.

“I need you to understand, I didn’t think a day on you or that little interaction of ours, least of all to feel bad over it. I’ve done such wrong to people that your suffering on my account would look like a favor in comparison.” The fist in his lap had dug so tight his nails might have drawn blood if he was a different man. “If you knew… If you knew, you’d thank me for leaving. Be glad you don’t love me, Edward.”

The pause only lasted seconds. Surely. The seconds were simply stretched, long and thin, by the weight of emotion in the room. A few small eternities later, Edward spoke.

“Evil,” he said. “That much we do have in common.”

“Oh, I doubt that.” The first bird of morning trilled outside the window. They waited out the song, as if hesitant to interrupt. “Not if you can count the mere desire for a good old fashioned tumble in the sheets with me among your sins.” Jasper smiled at the thought. At Edward’s innocence.

And Edward smiled in return. Jasper didn’t turn to look—didn’t need to see the smile to feel its warmth. At times, in the darkest times, Jasper thought of his ability as a tool merely for evil. It seemed a thing crafted by Satan himself. The things it could do—the things he could do with it. It was a rare moment that he could recognize the potential for good in his gift—in himself—but with the warmth of Edward’s smile radiating into him, he felt he could do good. Felt he could be good. Was convinced of it.

Edward’s hesitant chuckle only intensified the feeling, making it almost painful.

“It would be one of my lesser sins, of course,” the boy said with another chuckle.

“Of course,” Jasper said, chest tight. If he could have cried, he would have. He would have. But soon enough his mood shifted, as it always did, and he let out a chuckle of his own. “And then there’s the sin of touching yourself while picturing a tumble in the sheets with me. That must rank a bit higher—tell me,” he went on, unable to stop himself, “when you think of us together, who’s inside who?”

Edward turned, an unnecessary breath huffing past parted lips. If he could have blushed, he would have.

“I can’t do this,” Edward said, shaking his head. “If I take one step, the next will be easier. Sin on top of sin on top of sin and where will it end? I can’t let myself accumulate any more. We don’t love each other. We can’t be together. It’s not right and so we can’t.” Edward pulled out of Jasper’s embrace. Set his suitcase aside and stood. “I can’t.”

“So you’ll leave?” That small kernel of hope still rested, just sprouted, full of sudden potential, in his chest and he couldn’t let the boy go. He wouldn’t. “Edward, please—”

He was begging. Didn’t care.

“I… I can’t do that either. I can’t be on my own, I know that much at least. I’ve learned that much. I can’t be trusted on my own.”

“I’ll leave then,” Jasper said, not knowing if he was lying or not, too desperate to gauge. He stood to match Edward’s height. “Alice will understand. Hell, she’s probably already packing. I won’t stay here and torture—”

“No,” Edward said, just shy of desperate himself. “I won’t drive you out. Not over this.”

“Then I’ll stop. Me and Alice… we’ll go off in private from now on. I’ll—”

“No.” Edward shook his head sadly. “Please. When you’re with her… How you let me feel? I can feel how much you love her, Jasper, how much she loves you. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to— It may be the closest I ever get to—to any of it. Please, just….” He didn’t continue. And moments turned to minutes full of silent communication passed between lingering glances. What could remain hidden between the two of them? What could Edward read in each glance? Jasper felt the need to hide his thoughts, maintain his privacy, but he did not. He let them pass as they were. He owed the boy as much. And Edward’s emotions remained clear enough. As they always were. What could remain hidden?

“Fine,” Jasper said at long last. “But you should know now that I’ll be in love with you soon enough. Might be half way there already.”

“But Alice—”

“I love more than my life, same as always. I just suffer from an equal and opposite affliction to yours. I love too much, too often, and I fall for… all the wrong people.”

“Alice—”

“Is exactly the right kind of wrong.”

“It can’t be very deep then,” Edward said, standing too stiff and staring too fixedly. “Your love.”

Jasper chuckled darkly. He made his way over to Edward and took hold of the boy’s hand, grasped it between his palms. Opened himself up. Let Edward feel it all. That love, pure and unconditional and feeding the small kernel of hope for some kind of redemption against all odds and his very nature. That love, jealous and cruel and selfishly grasping. That love. All that love.

“How deep does it seem to you?”

Edward grasped Jasper’s palm at the sensation. Stood staring with shocked-wide eyes. “Half in love, you said?”

“Mmm, half at least.”

The next needless breath Edward took came ragged with emotion. Possibly every emotion, the wave of it hit Jasper so fast and thick that it was hard to differentiate between one feeling and the next. It was overwhelming. Too much. Depth of emotion was an unfortunate side effect of old age. You spent so much time feeling so little that when emotion did strike it struck to kill. Struck you down with its sheer force. 

Jasper didn’t try to comfort Edward. Any comfort he could provide would be a false manipulation. He didn’t know how to heal with words. With gestures. He’d never had to try.

“Then… Peter. You loved him. That was why….”

Jasper was surprised that Edward remembered the name. Surprised at the pain the name could still bring. Surprised enough to let Edward feel it again, that same jumbled mess of mostly pain, not diminished in the slightest, before he could banish it once more to be dealt with in the future. Always in the future. Time would never heal that wound.

“Once,” Jasper said, but at Edward’s scoff amended to “always.”

“I wouldn’t trade your affliction for mine,” Edward finally says. “At least there’s hope for me.”

Jasper cocked a half smile at that. Squeezed Edward’s hand once more before he loosened his grip for the night. “There is at that.”

He shook his head and headed for the door, thoughts already straying to Alice upstairs, no doubt giggling over the conclusion she knew they would come to hours ago.

“Oh, and Jasper,” Edward said as Jasper gripped the doorknob. “Just so you know, it’s you inside me.” Edward grinned, and Jasper indeed had hope for the boy. Hope and then too much hope. Edward’s grin went sharp but his eyes remained playful. “It’s always you inside me.”

And if Jasper could have blushed, he would have. He managed to toss Edward a wink before exiting the room, but only just. Alice’s pealing laughter came in clear as a bell before he even reached the stairs.

Definitely hope for the boy.


End file.
